Fawns And Stuff

Spotted in a neighbor's front yard recently:

Judging by size I guess they were born in the most recent batch.
Taller than cats, but not by a whole lot.

While daytime deer sightings are common, unguarded babies are another story.


If they are munching people's gardening they're obviously weaned and mama must have decided it was time to boot them out of the nest:
Too bad mama didn't school them on the dangers of the 'hood.
I was doing yard stuff, then creeping close for pictures, and the expected fear response never kicked-in.
Kinda worried about these little guys...



While navigating Blogger to make this post I noticed something odd on top of my dashboard:
I cropped it tight, but this is actual size.
WTF does it say?


Let's crank up the browser's magnification to 300% and see if it's legible:
Crap...
I hate the new Blogger interface.
It reminds me of the time I tried using Wordpress--not a good experience and I never could get either one to work in a logical or error-free manner.

Hopefully the bugs have been killed by now.

I Would Drive 500 Miles...

Since Wednesday I've set a mileage-per-day record in my Delightful Dodge Dakota.
Up to Austin for set-up, further north to a certain Marriot, back to the studio, around town for stuff, repeat, home, Beautiful Mess show in Adkins, Austin, home again...506.1 miles in five amazing days.

I will get to the specifics soon, but just wanted to start the Televator's recording sessions posts with a quick mention of my extreme fatigue.


Some of our songs are long, and others are fast. ALL are pretty heavy.
Extreme concentration while the dollars are flowing like water on a GPM scale messes with your mind.
Can't begin to imagine how tired our drummer Jaime got, but he's younger than me and recovered well.





ALL THE SMALL THINGS
Recording studios are an amazingly complicated place.
Ours was chock full of vintage equipment with jaw-dropping stats.
I'll spare you the details of which legendary hit songs had the vocals or drums or bass etc recorded using this item or that, but for a music junkie like me it was a trip through history that made all the biographies and oral reports I've read come alive. It's easy to think they are BS-ing until confirmation comes from 2nd and 3rd sources.
But with the good comes the bad.
We lost a lot of time right before the very first instance of hitting the record button when a fuse blew in our guitarist's Mesa Boogie tube power amp. The speaker cabinet was isolated in a closet with a single ribbon microphone, and it was screaming loud!!!
Probably louder than it had ever been pushed since built, and the amp's fuse quit like a big fricken wuss. For a change, I didn't have a spare and neither did the guys at Wire Recording, so an assistant engineer got sent to Radio Shack and we were back in business a hundred wasted bucks later...

Me: "It's a tube guitar amp--of course it's a slo-blo fuse!" and naturally I was right--the replacements looked exactly the same and worked perfectly.

On the second day we also lost an hour at the start when *again* the guitar wasn't working right.
After the entire signal chain got de-constructed and many cables were strewn about and many tiny screws were left rolling around on a dimly-lit end table, I overheard a conversation that mentioned that this particular guitar is equipped with EMG pickups.
Me: "So...it has a battery?"

When I hooked-up my multi-meter that piece of shit 9-volt was reading a mere 3.11v!!!
I replaced it with an already used 9v from A Beautiful Mess's wireless in-ear monitors that had enough juice to get the session cooking again, and cook it did.
The guitar was screaming, and sounded amazing!!!

Minor details like fuses and batteries can bite you in the ass.


The third item in the picture above is THE pick.
Call me weird, but I made it a point to practice and play with any one of several nearly identical picks in my pocket but when it was time to actually record Televators music this was the exact piece of plastic clenched tightly in my right hand.
Most bassists pluck the strings with their fingers at about a 75/25% ratio or some such.
As a guy who's played mostly lead and rhythm electric guitar since the Ford administration I'm most comfortable hitting strings with plastic instead of dirty calloused fingertips. And when you hear the results from this week's work I hope you agree that there's no better way to play tight and fast basslines than with a 0.88mm Dunlop Ultex triangle.

Kinda wish they made a 0.75 version to tame my aggression a bit, but what are you gonna do?


All kinds of photos from Wire Recording Studio are coming soon.
The last few days have been the most important and educational of my entire life.
Music has always been the key to happiness for me, and all of a sudden it's working much better than ever.

Famous By Fifty!!! is my new motto, but that's pushing things a bit.
51 is more realistic but doesn't flow as well when you say it out loud.

Not Guilty!

I mean, I don't feel guilty about not updating this blog in over two weeks.
Life happens...and sometimes you don't get a picture or a story out of it.

Introducing the newest member of the family, Kristin Brown.
My new "niece" was born on Thursday July 15th.
Mom, Dad, and Baby are all doing fine.

As her "crazy uncle" I'll be introducing her to Nutella, guitars, cameras, Southern Comfort, and explosives.
I'm already trying to figure out a way we can all get rich off those long toes she's sporting.



In other news...
I have been saving my pennies to buy this bass, the 4-string version of my beloved 8-string monster.
I like the idea of using the same electronics and materials and shape and almost everything, so that when I get the sound dialed-in there isn't a drastic change when I switch instruments. As I soundman I battle this all the time, so I'm trying to make things easier for me and anyone who has to mix me.

But then...
We went looking for all of the little obscure guitar shops around town this past weekend, and this was the first bass I got my hands on.
Red strings notwithstanding, I thought it was kinda sexy.
But when I played it...how can I word this?...there was movement in my pants.

Now, I have mixed hundreds of electric basses over the years, and tried most of them for a few minutes.
Played a few hundred more in stores.
Owned my share, both new and vintage.
My first bass was a 1962 Fender Precision that I sold for a 500% profit 3 years later.
(Had I kept it until now it would have been a 5000% profit, but times were tough).
What I'm getting at is that I know when I'm holding an instrument that has magic.
My guitar had magic when I played it in the store, and I still feel blessed that it was under the Christmas tree that year.

Well, after three notes on the bass above and I just knew that the stars were aligned when 3 seeds sprouted on 3 different continents, and that the angels above guided the saw blades at the lumber yards.
Every monkey and bird that sat in those branches could suddenly talk, and they only said the nicest things.
I know for damn sure that it wasn't assembled on a Monday or Friday.
This bass sings.
Every note rings forever, with clear tones.
It's a dream to play, like my hands were measured before they designed it.

On the other hand, it's rather a lot more than I had planned on spending despite the fact that the shop only wants around 55% of MSRP.
So it's a steal, but if I'm going to go for it I need to put down a deposit ASAP before someone else with half a brain beats me to it.
Decisions...decisions...


Did I mention that my birthday is coming up soon?
More importantly, 2 days after that is my 30th Anniversary in the music business.
(Legally in the biz--my older friends would sneak me into clubs to play guitar long before I turned 18).

Even more importantly, although we don't remember the exact day to celebrate our first date, Sylvia and I have been together for 10 years.

A Triple Milestone Party?
Sounds Awesome!
Hope I get invited...